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Monday, January 9, 2017

English-Vinglish?

For as long as I can remember, I have always been told to tone down my English. If I had a penny for every time someone told me so, I would be rich enough to be able to not only ignore them but also have people trying to acquire my exact vocabulary as one of the essential prerequisites of success. You know, one of those 'Seven secrets to success by famous multimillionaire...' sort of thing and, since they are generally pretty silent about what the chap was famous for, other than for being rich, it would have been alright by me.

"Superfluous words", screams one; "How about writing so that us ordinary mortals can understand it?" cries the other; "I rushed to the dictionary some twenty times per page", proudly announces another; "Is it necessary to use such difficult words when writing?" moans yet another. And so it goes.

I sort of have an idea of the picture that they have of me while writing. Almost buried in a stack of dictionaries and thesauruses (thesauri?), I would be sitting and typing my next magnum opus. I would dive in and search through all those tomes to find the most difficult word I could find to mean what I want to say. Then I would google for which of them is statistically proven to be known to the least number of people in the world and, presto, I would type in that word. At the end of the day, I would read through what I had written, do a face-palm, and scream in horror, "How could I? There are seven sentences with three or more consecutive words that everyone can understand!" and mark them for editing the next day.

However right that scene appears, it is wrong (like most things which seem so right that people think that they just cannot be questioned). Totally. I have not looked up a word in a dictionary or a thesaurus in my life. Ever. And THAT means not even to LEARN the words, leave alone to look up words while writing. Any word I know, I know only by reading and understanding the meaning from the context of what I read.

Impossible? Well, you see if I read something like "Wearing a coat with the buttons at the back and inside out to boot, with the tie knotted securely in a sailor's knot around the waist to hold up the trousers that ended somewhere between ankle and knee, he looked ludicrous", I can pick up what 'ludicrous' means. Since that is not exactly the picture of a dashing, well-dressed man-about-town, it is unlikely to mean 'elegant', so it probably means 'silly' or 'ridiculous'. And so it went, through school and college, till I ended up with a vocabulary like this.

I know I am the old model of human and the act of picking up a book of fiction to read does not automatically disengage my brain and put it to sleep, so I could process what I was reading unless I manually shifted the mental gears to neutral. The latest model of human, like the more modern cars, probably has automatic transmission and the disengagement happens without any conscious effort. It is even likely that the idea that the brain COULD be engaged while reading fiction strikes them as a novel, though quaint, idea. I assure you, though, that it IS true of me that my brain remained engaged and I picked up words without ever looking up a dictionary or thesaurus. To the extent that my sister, who fondly gifted me both for a birthday long back, looks ruefully at the books which are still brand new and untouched after a couple of decades...the ONLY two books in the house that have not seen ANY use.

The problem, you see, is in the books that I read. If you read Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' in fifth grade, run through almost all the English classics in the original before you are through with school (Yes! I read them even though I did not HAVE to for writing an exam or some such), and dip into Chekhov and Dostoevsky for light relief, your idea of what constitutes grade school English is likely to be totally revolutionary. It really is no use telling me to write so that someone in 6th grade can understand. I think I already AM doing that - THIS is my idea of 6th grade English because this WAS my 6th grade English.

I try desperately to mimic what others would see as toned-down English. Maybe, if I used smaller words? But then people just seem to think that 'humongous' is easier than 'huge' but balk at...err...'balk'. I try to make things simple by writing things like, 'He was a person very difficult to correct and no amount of education or persuasion could cause him to change his habits' and someone comes in saying with condescending helpfulness, 'Maybe instead of that Ramayan you could just say that he was incorrigible.' How was I to know that 'incorrigible' WAS 6th grade English, when people react petulantly when I use...err...'petulant'?

Maybe I should revert back to Kindergarten and start all over with the alphabet. THAT, though, is, probably, where all the problems started for me. My mom, when I was 3, taught me the alphabet based on 'A for Ambition, B for Bravery....' instead of the customary botanical/zoological route - you know apples, babies, cats and all. And with Y for Yearning and Z for Zeal, you know pretty much that my fate was sealed right then.

NOW, if I wrote in what I think is kindergarten English, I'd still have people clamoring for me to tone down my English!

Hehe.i liked your idea of statistically analysing and checking words which no one else uses.. wonder how it escaped me ! Even my English is Enid Blyton English and now I have graduated to Harry Potter :)

I too am a context guy, and I generally tell people willing to listen to keep the D's and T's away. Not all listen though--but I am convinced they are harming themselves. Even more important--I think they are preventing themselves from actually enjoying the book they are reading. Where is the fun if you keep referring to a D or T every five minutes.

I too have been told that 'they' had to look several words up when they were trying to read my book. In fact there were some who told me that their children practised for their GRE reading my book--a backhanded compliment if ever there was one!! The Princeton and Manhattan Review guys though would be happy with the state of things--if the young 'uns don't actually understand a word and its nuances, they will have no option but to turn to them...

Wish I had been taught that way :) Maybe my mom was afraid that if she taught me that way I would keep demanding all of that :) In the days when even milk was rationed, it would have become very difficult :)

Thanks for that, Alka! The issue for me is that I do not like saying the same thing that a lot of others are saying. Comes to current affairs, that is how it turns out 90% of the time - that I have nothing to add to what has already been said. What, really, would be the point in my outraging about molestation, when what I have to say has been said over and over again by so many people? I prefer to think that what I write has something novel, every time, in it for the reader. So, when I do write on current affairs it is only when I find that what I have to say has not appeared on MY timeline in FB, at least. Otherwise, I keep out of it.